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Articles by David Biespiel
Poem | All in All & Lines for Monday
Lyrical poetry is both haunted and inspired by impermanence. How can language begin to render the sensation of living in all of its exhilaration, confusion, beauty and grief? These new poems by David Biespiel aspire to do so. His 12th book, Beautiful Is the World: New and Selected Poems, 1996-2026, arrived this month—a cause for celebration.
David Biespiel Discusses the Life and Work of Stanley Plumly
SATURDAY MARCH 28 | 3PM Stanley Plumly is one of the most emotionally complex, satisfying, and influential American poets of the last fifty years. Born in 1939, Plumly wrote poems that explored the deep interiors of the human heart and mind. His recently published Collected Poems contains nearly three hundred of his poems, including nine new, previously unpublished ones, and represents his complete body of profoundly personal, socially astute poetry.
Atheneum Faculty Reading | Sep 13 3pm Free | Rose City Book Pub
A Statement of Our Values The Attic Institute of Arts and Letters opposes the legitimation of bigotry, hate, and misinformation. As a studio for writers, we do not tolerate harassment or discrimination of any kind. We embrace and celebrate our shared pursuit of literature and languages as essential to crossing the boundaries of difference.
A More Personal Look at the Attic's Atheneum
Listen to current Atheneum Fellows answer questions about their time in the Atheneum program: What has been the most productive part of the program so far? "I've appreciated how much more structured my writing process has become and the monthly deadlines to turn in work. It has kept me on track to finish a solid draft of my memoir by the time the program concludes in June." - Kristin Moran "It’s the community we’ve all formed that helps motivate me to sit in the chair and write.
The Attic's 25th Anniversary in 2024
In 2024, the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters celebrates our 25th year as a welcoming, vibrant writing studio where people from across Portland and from around the globe come to get inspired, find literary community, and grow as writers. Our mission at the Attic is to help people turn that glimmer of an image or overheard bit of conversation in a coffee shop or the difficult (or joyous) memory into new writing.
25th Anniversary Reading | Feb 17 | David Biespiel and Matthew Dickman
SAVE THE DATE: FEB 17 2024 You're invited to celebrate the Attic's 25th anniversary with founder David Biespiel and Senior Fellow Matthew Dickman reading at Mother Foucault's Bookshop in SE Portland.
Attic founder David Biespiel's acclaimed novel
"Beautiful." Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Thoughtful." Kirkus Reviews "Poetic." Lone Star Review In his thirteenth book, acclaimed poet, critic, memoirist, and founder of the Attic David Biespiel turns to the novel to tell a story about Texas that has few, if any, parallels in Texas literature — a novel about the tensions between ambition and faith, duty and desire, art and life, and about those whose lives must live with the consequences of choosing one over the other.
PRAISE for the Attic
A Statement of Our Values The Attic Institute of Arts and Letters opposes the legitimation of bigotry, hate, and misinformation. As a studio for writers, we do not tolerate harassment or discrimination of any kind. We embrace and celebrate our shared pursuit of literature and languages as essential to crossing the boundaries of difference.
Atheneum Alums Read at Rose City Book Pub | Dec 8 1pm | Free
You're invited to a free reading and panel discussion of Atheneum alums on Dec 8 2024, 1pm, at the Rose City Book Pub in NE Portland. Meet emerging writers. Expand your literary community. Hear new work and join a discussion of taking writing from scratch to publication.
david biespiel poem
Waking from a nightmare is a triumph of sorts—an escape from terror. Waking to a nightmare is terror itself. “Prisoner Z” conjures a dystopian world that exists today in countries we can name. Is this a dream narrative? A warning? Is it both? Image by image, the poem reminds us how suddenly our lives could change. —Jody Bolz, Poetry Editor PRISONER Z I have come back to my own Life now—or now my life Has come back to me with ink On its finger. Above Avenue 7 Protesters are being shot.
“Half Hour to Aberdour”
Late August, your estuary, now Flattens gray, and the eroded Pilings stagger from landfall Like upside-down legs, or Geometric marks you see in Generations of outdated Cave-wall photographs—all Finger flute and crosshatch.
David Biespiel: Trade Paperback: 9781622882441: Powell's Books
by $24.00 New Trade Paperback Release Date: 11/1/2023 Upcoming Event Two-time Oregon Book Award winner David Biespiel’s Self-Portrait in the Year of the High Commission on Love (Stephen F. Austin University Press) takes place during the first year of the Reagan era.
A SELF-PORTRAIT IN THE YEAR OF THE HIGH COMM… | Kirkus Reviews
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored. Awards & Accolades Likes 20 Our Verdict GET IT Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2022 New York Times Bestseller Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
Area writers score in Oregon Book Awards nominations
Mid-valley writers fared well in the nominations for 2022’s Oregon Book Awards, which were announced on Monday. Here’s the local rundown: Two Corvallis writers earned nominations for the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction: Oregon State University history professor Jacob Darwin Hamblin was nominated for his book “The Wretched Atom: America’s Global Gamble with Peaceful Nuclear Technology” (Oxford University Press).
Poem | Portrait of the Poet’s Grandmother (Lighting Candles)
ABOUT THIS ISSUE’S POEM: In many Jewish homes, lighting candles at dusk marks a shift to sacred time, the moment when the Sabbath starts—or a holiday, a yahrzeit. The ritual calls on us to turn from day-to-day concerns toward a more reverent relationship to time. This poem by David Biespiel offers another kind of illumination, suggesting years of life and loss within a candlelit glimpse.
“Sekiu,” by David Biespiel
Audio: Read by the author. It isn’t the dogs, their blacks And whites, nor the undercurrent Green seaweed the rocks Glisten with, at first light, Nor the headlong, uninterrupted Flight of this bald eagle That has come, like wind, Topping the branches—nor Along the estuary the riptide Wavering, like terra-cotta, Refractory, floating, like small Millings from the cast- Iron sun, abandoned— As on the highlands of an old Pastoral.
The Man in the Mirror
The Rings of Saturn A rare, bright, Sunday morning in January, no one On the streets, an early seaside glare, The kind of blue-lit morning you settle in To read The Rings of Saturn, taking in The bare-limb landscapes, the nothing layers Crenellating slowly to the harbor, the ground Going out from under you, and if you stand there Long enough to sense the tide going out, Folding back in the dolphin-wind of the half- Dark water (like a bedsheet in a house You woke in once as a child), you’ll...
Poet Biespiel's 'Exodus' leads home
David Biespiel has written “A Place of Exodus: Home, Memory, and Texas,” a memoir about his youth in Meyerland. Photo: Marion Ettlinger Earlier this year David Biespiel discovered a shadow version of “A Place of Exodus,” his new memoir. The poet took time during the pandemic to get his office in order. He came upon some bankers boxes with manuscripts full of verse, much of it about his youth in Meyerland, a period of billowing restlessness and theological tumult.
Loon Star State: Autocratic for the People
Do you think free access to journalism like this is important? The Texas Observer is known for its fiercely independent, uncompromising work—which we are pleased to provide to the public at no charge in this space. That means we rely on the generosity of our readers who believe that this work is important. You can chip in for as little as 99 cents a month. If you believe in this mission, we need your help.
A PLACE OF EXODUS
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom. In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife.
“Men Waiting for a Train”
Audio: Read by the author. At first they stand, orphaned, like a line of birds, First on one foot, then the other, in unison, Like any other unnamed someones, as if poised For a firing line, until someone thinks he knows A train is coming in the sparrow-morning light, And someone else taps a pack of cigarettes Against his gloved hand, not exotic, But it’s as if he’s slipped into captivity.
Every Writer Has A Thousand Faces (10th Anniversary Edition, Revised)
Home | Handpicked | New Arrivals | Support | Our Publishers | About | Contact | On Sale Home > New Nonfiction > Every Writer Has A Thousand Faces (10th Anniversary Edition, Revised) David Biespiel Pub Date:3/30/2020 Publisher: Kelson Books Product Number:9780982783849 ISBN978-0-9827838-4-9 SKU #: A08F Binding:PAPERBACK Pages:88 Weight0 lbs.6 oz. Quantity Available: 27 Price: $ 12.00 Description Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Art.
“Republic of Magpies”
Audio: Read by the author.
Gary Snyder: Local Hero
The typical way to write about Gary Snyder is to note his status as a poet and Zen Buddhist associated with the San Francisco Renaissance. I’m going to skip that part. Not that it’s inaccurate—Snyder, who was born in 1930, has long sat in the company of such writers as Allen Ginsberg and Philip Whalen. But that perspective obscures Snyder as an American environmentalist—which may well end up being his most lasting influence.
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Poet’s Journey: Chapter 7
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Poet’s Journey: Chapter 7 In the previous installment of the Poet’s Journey, I wrote about the urgency for a poet to be alert to the unexpected and to embrace it when it comes. This essay wonders what happens when a poet refuses to embrace the unexpected. There are times as a poet when the unforeseen, the unintentional, and the unsuspected drop right in your lap and yet you do not respond. Sometimes even you refuse to respond.
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: W. S. Merwin: An Appreciation
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: W. S. Merwin: An Appreciation Until last Friday, when he died at the age of ninety-one, in Hawaii, where he lived for some forty years and restored palm trees and native plants, W. S. Merwin was by unanimous consent synonymous with contemporary American poetry. Now that he’s died, I feel suddenly like everything is dropping away, and he has become his poems. And we can read him fresh once again. W. S.
He’s a Legend of Contemporary Poetry. There’s Finally a Volume of His Collected Work.
COLLECTED POEMS By Robert Bly 505 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $39.95. There might be little left to say about Robert Bly, the poet, critic, translator and nonagenarian whose astonishing “Collected Poems” is now available. Ever since 1962, when “Silence in the Snowy Fields” established him as a poet of desperate sincerity, he has been a paragon of Jungianism against the brutality of capitalism and militancy. He’s hardly changed.
Mississippi God Damn by David Biespiel
JSTOR and the Poetry Foundation are collaborating to digitize, preserve, and extend access to Poetry.
César Vallejo
Peruvian expatriate César Vallejo was a major poet, known for the authenticity and originality of his work. Deeply rooted in his mixed European and Peruvian Indian heritage, his poetry expressed universal themes related to the human condition. Sometimes called a surrealist poet, “Vallejo created a wrenching poetic language for Spanish that radically altered the shape of its imagery and the nature of its rhythms.
David Biespiel named as Oregon State University’s first poet-in-residence
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Poet, memoirist and literary critic David Biespiel has been named poet-in-residence at Oregon State University, a new public-facing role that will highlight and celebrate the university’s contributions to the genre of poetry. “Oregon State has a long and rich history of powerful contributions to the liberal arts in our state and nation,” said OSU Provost Ed Feser.
Notable Portland: 2/15-2/21
Thursday 2/15: The Clark College Columbia Writers Series invites Cheston Knapp, Managing Editor of Tin House and author if the new essay collection, Up Up, Down Down. Clark College, 10 a.m., free. Cave Canem poet and PEN Open Book Award finalist francine j. harris reads for the Reed College Visiting Writers Series. Eliot Hall Chapel, 6:30 p.m., free. Local author Nathaniel Barber reads from Luck Favors the Prepared, his latest collection of short stories and essays. Another Read Through, 7 p.m., free.
What Does Your Life Teach You About Becoming a Writer?
I hadn’t been living on Glenville Avenue with Giff, Nick, and Paul very long when a girl who’d recently graduated from Boston University in physics—and with whom, clandestinely, I’d been prowling around, and I’d been having vague imaginings of what it would be like to steal her away from her new husband, a jazz student who went to Berklee—slipped into our apartment one night and sat down on my bed. She removed her blouse and bra and skirt and climbed under the covers next to me.
Biespiel, David: Hardcover: 9781619029934: Powell's Books
Please note: Signed preordered books will be shipped to you and are not available for pick-up in the store the night of the event (but if you're planning to attend, don't worry! Signed editions are usually available at the events). Also, we are sorry but we can not accommodate personalized inscriptions, or guarantee the signed books are first editions. Thanks for your understanding.
Carrie Brownstein | Bend Film Fest | Jackpot Records
This week on “State of Wonder,” we talk Sleater-Kinney and “Portlandia” with Carrie Brownstein, get a preview of the Bend Film Fest, paint some eyeballs with ocularist Fred Harwin and more. Work from regional movie makers is on screen alongside some of the smash hits from the Cannes Film Festival and other premier venues at this year’s Bend Film Festival, running Oct. 12–15.
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 10): “The Gods” | The Rumpus.net
In September W. S. Merwin turns ninety. From the view of poetry that orbits around historical movements and groupings of poets based on style or substance, Merwin has always been a misfit. He was, first, during the 1950s, a latter-day Academic Poet after the manner of Robert Lowell, where what was prized was a chiseled form of Augustanism that favored ambiguity.
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 9): “The City Limits” | The Rumpus.net
Asking friends recently what has their attention in contemporary American poetry, I received the reply, “Well, we have a new poetry now that wants to be a record of seeing into the lives of politically minded Americans and also be in the service of how these lives are being lived in encounters with racism, war, reactionary affairs of state, and a rigged justice system.” Enough material in those topics, I thought, to occupy American poets for a thousand years. Or, for not very long at all.
30 Books #4: David Biespiel on Robert Pinsky’s ‘The Foundling Hospital’
In the 30 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 16 announcement of the 2016 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the thirty finalists.
30 Books in 30 Days: At the Foundling Hospital
In the 30 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 16 announcement of the 2016 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the 30 finalists. Today, NBCC board member David Biespiel offers an appreciation of poetry finalist Robert Pinsky’s At the Foundling Hospital (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
Critical Notes: George Saunders, Jade Chang, Ali Smith, 30 Books in 30 Days, and more!
In the 30 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 16 announcement of the 2016 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the thirty finalists. Today, NBCC board member Laurie Hertzel offers an appreciation of autobiography finalist Kao Kalia Yang’s The Song Poet (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt).
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 6): “To Elsie”
I so distrust the platitude that America is a classless society, with all the inaccuracy of that term as shorthand for the fairy tale of equality. The great battle between the classes is not only the collision of upper versus lower, but more often, most concussively, it takes place where the upper-middle class meets the middle, or where the middle does the same to the class just below it.
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 1): “The Idea Of Ancestry”
This column is the first of 21 pieces on poems I’m interested in, and I hope you will be too, that I want to offer here as poems that have shaped America. By that I don’t mean poems really, truly “shaped” America. Or created America. Poems don’t have the impact of creating mass perceptions as Hollywood or politics, or the latest iPhone. Rarely anyway.
30 Books: Elizabeth Taylor on George Hodgman’s “Bettyville”
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In the days leading up to the March 17 announcement of the 2015 NBCC award winners, Critical Mass highlights the thirty finalists. Today, NBCC board member ...read » In the days leading up to the March 17 announcement of the 2015 NBCC award winners, Critical Mass highlights the thirty finalists. Today, NBCC board member ...read » In the days leading up to the March 17 announcement of the 2015 NBCC award winners, Critical Mass highlights the thirty finalists.
By Carmela Ciuraru, David Biespiel, Kate Tuttle Verified, Elizabeth Taylor Verified, Michael Miller Verified
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bookcritics.org
30 Books: David Biespiel on Mary Beard’s “SPQR”
In the days leading up to the March 17 announcement of the 2015 NBCC award winners, Critical Mass highlights the thirty finalists. Today, NBCC board member David Biespiel offers an appreciation of nonfiction finalist Mary Beard's "SPQR" (Liveright) What satisfies so much in Mary Beard’s SPQR, her sweeping history of Rome, is how easily you find what you thought you knew about Roman history debunked and what you learn afresh impressive.
30 Books in 30 Days: David Biespiel on Mary Beard’s SPQR
In the days leading up to the March 17th announcement of the 2015 NBCC award winners, NBCC’s blog, Critical Mass, will be highlighting the thirty finalists with critical appraisals—we’re happy to be running those concurrently here at Literary Hub.
30 Books in 30 Days: Carmela Ciuraru on Colm Tóibín’s On Elizabeth Bishop
In the days leading up to the March 17 announcement of the 2015 NBCC award winners, Critical Mass highlights the thirty finalists. Today, NBCC board member Carmela Ciuraru offers an appreciation of criticism finalist Colm Tóibín’s On Elizabeth Bishop (Princeton University Press). In the spring of 1975, Colm Tóibín bought a copy of Elizabeth Bishop’s Selected Poems at the Compendium Bookshop in London. He was nineteen years old.
30 Books: David Biespiel on Frank Stanford’s “What About This”
In the days leading up to the March 17 announcement of the 2015 NBCC award winners, Critical Mass highlights the thirty finalists. Today, NBCC board member David Biespiel offers an appreciation of poetry finalist Frank Stanford's "What About This" (Copper Canyon Press). Born in Richton, Mississippi in 1948, Frank Stanford was adopted by a single mother into a upper middle-class Memphis family.
30 Books in 30 Days: David Biespiel on Frank Stanford: “Poetry Busts Guts”
In the days leading up to the March 17th announcement of the 2015 NBCC award winners, NBCC’s blog, Critical Mass, will be highlighting the thirty finalists with critical appraisals—we’re happy to be running those concurrently here at Literary Hub. Today, NBCC board member David Biespiel offers an appreciation of poetry finalist Frank Stanford’s What About This (Copper Canyon Press).
30 Books: Tess Taylor on Ross Gay’s “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude”
In the days leading up to the March 17 announcement of the 2015 NBCC award winners, Critical Mass highlights the thirty finalists. Today, NBCC board member Tess Taylor on poetry finalist Ross Gay's "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude" (University of Pittsburgh Press). Sometimes, in this age of irony, disillusionment, and moral outrage, it is hard to find convincing language for praise, or space for praising at all.
30 Books: Tess Taylor on Ross Gay’s “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude”
In the days leading up to the March 17 announcement of the 2015 NBCC award winners, Critical Mass highlights the thirty finalists. Today, NBCC board member Tess Taylor on poetry finalist Ross Gay's "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude" (University of Pittsburgh Press). Sometimes, in this age of irony, disillusionment, and moral outrage, it is hard to find convincing language for praise, or space for praising at all.
‘The Darkening Trapeze: Last Poems,’ by Larry Levis
Larry Levis is so much identified with the rhetoric of elegiac poetry — his choice of subjects, from beauty to hopelessness; his position as a poet of the San Joaquin Valley; his reputation since his death by heart attack in 1996 at the age of 49 — that it can be easy to forget how extraordinarily tender he was. And his tenderness can cause you to overlook his social conscience.
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